Urban Food Forests
Landscape Design
Imagine your lawn transformed. There are lovely-scented flowers by the doors and pathways, fruit trees in blossom and others in fruit, organic vegetables reaching ripeness, each at different parts of the season. Medicinal herbs grow in a spiral, or interspersed throughout your yard, which can be made into teas. Squirrels, rabbits, bats and birds of all kinds flock to your house specifically due to the abundance of biodiversity. There are insects you’ve never seen living in your garden, some of them extremely useful at repelling pests. And every year you get to watch your fruit trees get a little bigger and more productive, to watch your personal slice of nature come and more to life (my favourite part).
A Food Forest design aims, ultimately, to replicate the systems found in Nature. A design is tailored for aesthetic appeal, but it must also be heavily centred upon water capture, companion planting, and the efficient distribution and recycling of nutrients.
When I design a Food Forest for a client, whether it’s one to take over their entire yard or one circular plant ‘guild’, I aim to make a landscape which is pleasing to all of the senses, while also making it as low-maintenance as possible. A properly designed Food Forest will not only create an abundance and variety of food and resources, it will also create an efficient and low-maintenance system.
From $99-499 (design)
For a plant guild with a 10 foot diameter design $99
For a front + backyard comprehensive landscape design $499
Price of design is free of charge if the client hires us to landscape the project or a significant portion of it
Food Forests
This was a project we completed in the summer of 2022. We transitioned a lawn and tool shed, to the following in a 21/26ft space:
Greenhouse, simple fence and vine-arch, a plum tree, an apple tree, corn + squash + beans(3 Sisters), arctic kiwi, currant, gooseberry, strawberry, comfrey, concord grape, raspberry, honeyberry (haskap), Saskatoon berry, chamomile, California poppy, asparagus, borage. All of these plants are placed intentionally, each serving a unique purpose in the garden and working in synergy with one another.
Growing in the green house are a variety of annual vegetables. It can produce enough lettuce for a salad almost every day of the summer, or daily tomatoes, whatever type of vegetables are preferred, in the first year. The majority of the plants outside of the greenhouse are perennials which will take 3+ years to produce a good crop but which require little maintenance.
Landscaping Price
= 2.5x cost
There is no labour cost for projects. Prices are the cost of plants/resources x 2.5 (in most cases)
Why J's Lawns and Trees
I love a pristine cut lawn, and taking care of lawns is my primary business and passion. However, the way the world is trending, I believe the future is food forests and gardens. There are so many reasons to begin converting lawns into food forests. Food forests sequester carbon, produce organic produce that requires no transportation, increase biodiversity, decrease herbicide and pesticide use world-wide, empower the people with food, knowledge and community. The list goes on.
My expertise in this field is from personal study alongside a phytotherapy training from Pacific Rim College. Phytotherapy is the study of plant chemicals, and is essentially a training program for medical herbalists. Herbalism is the study of plant medicine, and the food forests I create are perhaps unique due to my love of growing medicinal herbs. But the ultimate medicine for humans are organic and nutrient-rich fruits and vegetables, which a food forest provides in abundance.
I love creating an evolving, bio-diverse Landscape which serves a purpose. I love creating an efficient system which captures water, sunlight, and nutrients with little required input. I feel honoured to sculpt Land in accordance with Nature’s principals, and do my best to make my clients as enriched as I am. As J’s Lawns and Trees is relatively new at creating food forests, prices are still low for the summer of 2023.
3 Years Experience in Food Forests
Carbon-sequestering
Quick Turnaround
Dedicated Support
Ready for your Food Forest?
Contact us!
If you’re feeling interested or excited about making your own unique food forest for organic food production and to contribute to the environment, email me at justin@jslawnsandtrees.ca
In the email include your address (I can get a view of the land with google maps); photos (optional); whether you’re looking to create a food guild, garden, or food forest; a general estimate of dimensions (e.g. 10 ft by 10 ft); any relevant info and ideas you may have for what you’d like to create.
From the information you share I’ll be able to give you a quote for a consultation, which will include a visit to your home to have a look at the land and formulate some ideas together, as well as a detailed design which you can go over and make changes to. (Price of design and consultation will be reimbursed if you hire us to landscape the project)
In a follow-up email I’ll send you a list of all the edible plants which will grow in Calgary, giving you time to go over them before our design consultation.
We like to keep these projects fun and flexible! We want to hear your vision, and use our expertise to make it a reality within an efficient and successful system.